This
time we will not test another super high speed CD-RW recorder, which we have
lately used to see from the most of the manufacturers. Toshiba offers a new
proposal, which combines CD-RW recording with DVD reading capabilities. The
"Toshiba SD-R1202" IDE CD-RW / DVD-ROM drive does not intent to replace
your existing recorder but users could find attractive the idea of a reliable
combo drive in their PC.

- The drive

The
combo drive supports 16x CD writing, 10x re-writing, 40x (CD) and 12x DVD-ROM
reading. The firmware version installed is v.1023 and the cache buffer of the
drive is 2 MB.

The generic looking front panel of the drive includes the "DVD-ROM"
and "CD-Rewritable" logos. There is also one operation led, the eject
button and the headphone input jack/volume selector:

On the back of the drive there are the usual connectors (IDE interface,
power), the jumpers for setting the drive as Master/Slave/Cable Select, the
SPDIF output connector and 3 jumpers which are not used (factory reserved).

The IDE connection can be run in PIO Modes, DMA Mode 2 (16.6 MB/s),
or DMA mode 3 (33 MB/s), depending on what you set in the motherboard's BIOS
to run the drive at. There is no way to force the drive into DMA mode via jumpers.

- Installation

Toshiba SD-R1202 was installed as Master in the secondary IDE
BUS. The drive worked in UDMA-2 mode and after boot up, it identified itself
as the "Toshiba SD-R1202". Under WinXP, DMA was activated automatically.

The drive was a February 2002 model , with v1023 firmware revision installed.
The drive supports a buffer underrun protection system, but we are not sure
of the exact type. We used Nero v5.5.8.0, InCD v3.24.3, CloneCD v4.0.0.0. beta
21 and NeoDVD v2.6 for the recording tests.